Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 63: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Se 3 By GEORGE ALLAN ENGLAND LMOST the first “SPIKE” DUGGAN PAROLED Yegg Doing Twenty Years Released after Eight Boston, Mass., Feb. 10..-On recommenda- tion of the Parole Board, Jeremiah H. Dug- gan was yesterday released from custody at Charlestown State Prison. Duggan, formerly known as “ Spike,’”’ was sentenced in 912 to twenty years, for complicity in the post office break at East Deering, in which Postmaster John H. Ainsworth was killed. Duggan has continually protested his innocence, claiming he was the victim of mistaken identity. The case attracted considerable attention at the time. Duggan has always been a model prisoner, and the Parole Board has been interested in item on which Judge Rutherford Van Blount’s eye ~ fell that morning, as he opened his paper at breakfast, was this: his case for some months. His two com- panions in the break, Nazro and Gilligan, were both electrocuted in 1913. The State set up the claim that Duggan was “ outside man” or watchman while the others blew the safe, and that— The judge did not finish the item. In- stead, he let the paper fall, and for a moment sat all astare. He made a strange dry noise in his throat that caused Mrs. Van Blount to glance up from her grapefruit. “What is it, dear?” ‘“* Nothing, nothing! I—I got some juice down the wrong way, that’s all.” With critical curiosity his excellent and still rather comely wife regarded him. The fact that his grapefruit stood as yet un- touched in its tall-stemmed dish gave his statement an apocryphal quality. “Something in the paper you don’t like, dear?” 693 Eomichbooks: co